Slide from Professor Margaret Ledwith's guest lecture to Social & Community Development students and staff at the University of Northampton on 2nd March 2010

1. Becoming Critical: Community development as practice for social justice Margaret Ledwith Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice University of Cumbria, UK

2. Community Development Community development is about social justice and environmental justice Twin world crises of social justice and sustainability

3. New ideas: new policy Social exclusion due to personal deficits ‘De-emphasises’ poverty and redistributive justice (Tett, 2006) Erodes collective responsibility Gives rise to povertyism: poverty as a personal problem (Killeen,2008)

4. EVERY CHILD MATTERS!Or do they? State of the world’s children 2005: Childhood under threat (UNICEF, 2005): one in every two children of the world in poverty UNICEF report (2007) on child well-being in rich countries: UK bottom of 21 countries

5. Troubled times: child poverty in Black and White,Moss Side, Manchester, UK, 2008 ‘The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born’ (UNICEF, 2007: 1).

6. Who is poor? Racist dimensions of UK child poverty 27% of children from white families 36% Indian 41% Black Caribbean 47% Black non-Caribbean 69% Pakistani and Bangladeshi Source: Child Poverty Action Group (2008) Child Poverty: The stats, London:CPAG

7. A divided world Widening gap between poverty and prosperity Polarising social divisions within and between countries Acceleration of globalisation – profit imperative exploits people and environments Same structures of oppression – class, ‘race’, gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, faith, ‘dis’ability… reproduced on global scale World in crisis offers new possibilities!

8. Problematising Katrina:a politics of disposability

9. Practical theory in action Begins in stories of everyday life Values: equality, respect, dignity, mutuality, trust… Teaching to question the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life Re-experiencing the ordinary as extraordinary Understanding local lives as politically constructed across difference Dialogue: creating critical dissent Praxis: theory/practice, action/reflection, thinking/doing Conscientisation: becoming critical Collective action for change: local to global Worldview based on cooperation, not competition Participatory democracy

10. Culture of silence

11. Respectful encounters: listening to everyday stories

12. Problematising: re-experiencing the ordinary as extraordinary

13. Teaching to question:Who? Where? What? Why? How? In whose interests?

14. Dialogue: connected knowing across difference

15. Action/reflection:generating practical theories

16. Creating critical dissent dialogue:challenging the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life with carnivalesque in the public square

17. Scholes Community Garden:replacing dereliction with beauty

18. Local action: carnival as dissent

19. Local to national action:Migrant Rights Centre Irelandcampaign for policy change on work permits

20. Local to global action: women of the world unite, Beijing 1995

21. Where to from here? Michael Pitchford (2008): CD is distracted, lost our overarching purpose, colonised by top-down policy ‘herding communities into structures and forums they neither own nor relate to’ CD about deepening democracy: critique, dissent, vision are foundation of social justice praxis!